


For Love of Fight

by quietlyintoemptyspaces



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Non Consensual, Rape, Unsafe Sex, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-12 00:19:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietlyintoemptyspaces/pseuds/quietlyintoemptyspaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They cross the countryside like a storm, destroying all in their path and leaving little behind. Nightmares travel before them and legends trail after. Nowhere is safe. No one.</p>
<p>Sometimes Arthur wonders if he is searching for something. Something more challenging. Something that will put fear into his empty soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Love of Fight

They hunt. They eat. They sleep. They ride. They fight.

That is all there is in Arthur’s life, all his father taught him, to live from one fight to the next, the adrenaline stretching and fueling his body to stand above all others. They are weak, his father used to tell him. They let their guard down for baser pleasure; let the enemy come close enough to kill. Greater men had fallen for less. 

Arthur would not.

Sometimes, after a hard days slaughter, he lets himself think on his mother. How her death turned his father into the ruthlessly merciless beast that had caught his own death at the hands of a wearied rebel leader. Arthur wonders what made his father weak.

He watches his men in the burning villages, taking women and men to bed. He listens to the grunts and the moans and the whimpers and wonders why they do it, why the fight is not enough for them. Leon takes in his confused glances, concerned frowns, and laughs silently, claps him on the back beneath his armor.

“There are some things only another warm body can give a man that cold steel and warm fire cannot fathom. One day, my warrior friend, you will understand,” Leon explains, before he too takes to a shabby hut with a crying girl.

Arthur keeps watch, stands guard, and sharpens his blade. He does not believe that a warm body can provide anything that his sword cannot. He lives for the fight, and he will die for it. His father taught him that. And it is the only thing he believes in.

They ride at dawn. 

They cross the countryside like a storm, destroying all in their path and leaving little behind. Nightmares travel before them and legends trail after. Nowhere is safe. No one.

Sometimes Arthur wonders if he is searching for something. Something more challenging. Something that will put fear into his empty soul. 

There is no resistance. Village after village, pillaged and ransacked and raped and left for dead. He is becoming careless, leaving blatantly obvious openings for his enemies to take advantage, to turn the fight into something more like survival.

Arthur slaughters, and kills, and wipes his blade clean on the clothes of his prey. He is closer.

In a small village with nothing more than a few measly bags of grain and scared elders, Arthur meets the boy with golden eyes he tells himself he doesn’t dream about. He is the only opposition. The boy doesn’t look like much; too lanky, too lean, underfed, with ears he has yet to grow into. But he stood his ground, raised his hand and brought forth a whirlwind of fire and ice, made lightning strike at them from dark clouds that had not been there before.

As Arthur tackles him to the muddy ground, presses him into the broken grass and holds him there, struggling and fighting, he finds he has never wanted anything in his life more than this one man who had dared to stand against him. He stands and drags the boy away to the nearest hut, ignores the fingernails digging into his wrists and bruising his arms, doesn’t turn to make sure his men can handle whatever it might be they are up against.

He’s never done this before. He’s seen it done many times, seen how easy it is to slide right in, to take a hard cock and shove it into a hole, stretch it open and share it around the fire. But this one won’t be shared. This one is Arthur’s.

He’s never been this hard. He can tell by the boy’s widened golden eyes, by the objects flying around the room at him, that he’s scared of what’s going to happen. Arthur wonders if his men’s conquests have ever looked like that, shaking and on the verge of tears, breathing too light and too fast.

He rips the boy’s clothes from his body, too scrawny, too pale, he notices, and then pushes himself inside. A ragged, savage cry, followed by wracking sobs, is forced from his throat as Arthur thrusts wantonly into the suddenly warm and wet hole, torn skin spreading for the intrusion. It’s too tight, his cock too sensitive for this new sensation; it doesn’t take long before Arthur is shuddering and grunting in unexpected pleasure.

He rolls to the side and watches the boy raise shaking hands to a quivering mouth, stares into eyes that are no longer molten with unrestrained challenge but icy broken hatred and wonders when that happened, when gold turned to blue.

Arthur thinks it’s almost as beautiful as the blood that coats his thighs.

The next morning before they set out he learns the boy’s name from what he assumes is his mother, a sad woman sorry to see her son leave, but happy nonetheless that he will get away from this little village that will see more trouble than what Arthur and his men have brought.

“Merlin,” she cries, fat tears rolling down her dusty cheeks as she presses something into his hands. He’s still in shock from the night before, eyes still blank, but he takes whatever his mother gives him. “Be careful. Stay close to these men. They’re dangerous, but they’ll protect you.”

Merlin, he thinks, and then takes the boy every time they stop; against a tree; in the woods; in the stream when it’s time to bathe; on the side of a burning hut; beside the fire as the others pass their conquests back and forth; in a bed of leaves when they are supposed to be hunting dinner; in the morning before Merlin is even properly awake.

Arthur learns that it is even better when Merlin’s hole is stretched and loosened beforehand, when he doesn’t have to worry about skin tearing and broken screams alerting any nearby lurking enemies to their whereabouts. He likes sliding into Merlin’s mouth, too, wet heat and stroking tongue and hollowed cheeks swallowing him down until it feels like his entire body explodes into Merlin’s throat, leaving behind flushed cheeks and swollen lips.

Arthur spends too much time protecting Merlin. He realizes this on a day when he is almost struck down by a stray axe. Blue eyes haven’t turned gold since that first night and Arthur spends too much time contemplating on the reasons why. When an arrow strikes him in the shoulder that was meant for Merlin, Arthur thinks he knows why his father went mad.

Merlin takes care of him while the others ride ahead, presses cool cloth to his forehead to break the fever of infection and kisses along his jaw to quell the bad dreams. He wonders why Merlin uses his mouth that way, parting his lips and flicking his tongue out to taste Arthur’s; he’s never seen anyone do that, never felt anything in his mouth other than food or drink.

He’s half delirious when Merlin devours first his lips and then his teeth and tongue, a hungry, lust-filled thing that has his cock filling and responding almost immediately. Merlin rides him then and brings himself off over and over again, mouths never separating even as he gasps and writhes and moans in a language Arthur’s never heard before.

By the time his seed spills, his shoulder is no longer sore and Merlin’s tired burning eyes are golden.

“You protected me,” he explains. It’s the first time Arthur has heard him speak in the months they’ve been riding together and he thinks that he could never tire of hearing it. “Healing you is the least I can do.”

Merlin is still straddling him, still has Arthur’s fat, filled cock inside his bottom, thinks he could live like this for the rest of his life; knew it a long time ago, but loving a man who loves only battle is no way to live.

“Mine,” Arthur growls as he thrusts up, bringing Merlin’s mouth down to meet his own, drawing lips and tongue out to play. Cautiously, he touches the heavy cock twitching on his stomach, rubs the veins with rough fingertips until it quivers and then squeezes the base. Merlin throws his head back and moans Arthur’s name as he rocks his hips. It’s never felt like this.

Merlin’s cock shudders in Arthur’s hand, spits his seed over wrist and fingers and then stills as Arthur follows, Merlin’s name tumbling from his lips before he can stop himself. Merlin slides off of him and lies beside him, essence leaking out of him like a mark of ownership.

It’s how his men find them when they come back with a doctor. The old man smiles like he knows what happened, more than magic and sex and ownership. “You have met your destiny, young Merlin,” he whispers, nodding respectfully at Arthur.

Merlin’s not sure what that means, but he’ll certainly take what he can get.


End file.
